


No Exit

by futuresoon



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuresoon/pseuds/futuresoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment he got in his car, the engine made a clunking noise and refused to start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Exit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for nightvalecommunitykink.

“Just--I’m just testing,” Carlos says, because Cecil’s eyes always light up at that. Testing. Experimenting. Anything “science”. Cecil is always willing to help, but when Carlos frames it like that, Cecil would practically _leave the studio_ to offer whatever assistance he could. So that’s how he puts it.

His first test had gone like this:

The moment he got in his car, the engine made a clunking noise and refused to start. When he got out of the car to check the hood, it started up again. He got back in the car. The engine stopped. He got back out. It started.

He thought, very hard, _I’m just going to the grocery,_ and when he got back in the engine purred like nothing had ever been wrong.

He drove to the grocery store and bought a six-pack of something that looked vaguely alcoholic, because he was pretty sure he’d need it.

Then he took a different turn than the one he’d take to go back to the apartment, and the engine made a disapproving sound. _I’m going to visit Larry Leroy,_ he thought, very hard. The engine kept going, but he felt like it was watching him.

Once Larry Leroy’s house was in sight, he took another different turn, and the engine stopped.

He rested his forehead against the steering wheel. After a few moments, he said, “I’m going home,” and could have sworn the noise the engine made when it started up again was self-satisfied.

He drove back to the apartment with no incident whatsoever. When he got back inside, he went quietly to his bedroom, sat quietly on his bed, picked up a pillow, and screamed into it.

So now Carlos is taking a different approach. 

“I just need to go a few miles out of town,” he says. “To test something.”

In the passenger seat, Cecil nods like he understands completely.

The start of the drive is quiet, because sometimes Cecil just doesn’t talk around him, or at least not very much. Carlos thinks it must still be nerves. But then, he’s never been that great at talking either, so perhaps it’s for the best.

When they reach the edge of town, Carlos sees Cecil fidget a little. He expected that, to be honest; it would only add to his theory. He’s not happy to see it, though. He doesn’t _want_ anything to add to his theory.

Finally, Carlos decides to break the silence, if only to keep Cecil distracted. “Do you know how the renovations on the bank are going?” he asks. “I know you mentioned it on the show a few days ago, but there hasn’t been any update since then.”

Cecil perks up the way he always does when Carlos asks anything about Night Vale. “Oh, well, they’re still trying to chip away at the acid burns,” he says. “But I don’t think they’ve made a proper protection circle yet. Pentagrams can only do so much, you know. Dodecahedrons--now _there’s_ a good way to keep the unknowable beings at bay. Tradition is one thing, but some things just need to change with the times.”

For lack of a better reaction, Carlos just says, “Yeah.”

They’re past the edge of town, now. It’s farther than Carlos has been in months. There are butterflies in his stomach at the thought, or maybe that’s just what he had for lunch. It wasn’t moving at the time, but you never know.

For a moment, the slightest moment, before he can stop himself, Carlos thinks, _Finally._

A tire bursts.

“Oh dear,” Cecil says. He glances out the window. “I hope we didn’t run over anything important.”

Carlos feels hysterical laughter rising up in his throat. He swallows it down. 

“Yeah, I hope so,” he manages to say. He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets outside of the car to look.

The flat tire sits smoking on the ground. Carlos leans down to check, and yup, there’s a small sharp rock lodged in it. The kind that could be found anywhere. It’s perfectly ordinary to find one on the road. On any road away from here, he’d write it off as an annoying accident. He’s not on a road away from here.

“I suppose we should call quadruple-A,” Cecil says, peering down with him. “They’ll get this sorted out. And they hardly ever lose all memory of your call.”

Carlos thinks about asking what the extra A is for. He doesn’t.

“I don’t have their number,” he says. “Do you?”

“Of course!” Cecil says. “I have every number. This will only take a moment.” He pulls out a cell phone and taps it four times. The screen stays black, but Carlos hears a faint buzzing noise, like the sound of a thousand flies swirling around the fallen corpses of an abandoned battlefield. 

The buzzing grows louder. “Yes, hello!” Cecil says into the phone. “We’re out by Route 800. One of the tires has attempted a true death. How soon can you be here? It’s in the interests of science.”

The buzzing takes a higher pitch. “Of course,” Cecil says. “We’ll be waiting.” He taps the screen once more, and the buzzing stops. 

Carlos sits heavily on the hood of the car. It’s warm in the desert heat, but not so warm as to be uncomfortable. It’s giving him that much, at least.

“I do hope this hasn’t interrupted the test too badly,” Cecil says. 

“No, it’s just another data point,” Carlos says. He stares off into the distance. The sand wastes stretch forever before him. Far off to one side, a splotch of green indicates the Whispering Forest. For a brief moment, he wonders what would happen if he tried to enter it.

“How far could you walk through the sand wastes?” Carlos asks. 

“On your own? Why, forever, conceivably,” Cecil says. “You need to follow the road. Otherwise it’s so easy to get lost.”

“If you did follow the road, then,” Carlos says. “How far could one person get by walking?”

Cecil shrugs, and looks disappointed that he doesn’t know the answer. “No one’s ever tried. Or at least, no one’s come back to tell us about it.”

Carlos takes that as another sign that his theory is sadly, horribly true.

Night Vale will never let him leave.

They wait in silence for a few more minutes before a truck shimmers into being behind them. A stocky woman in a dark blue uniform gets out. She walks over to them, nods, and bends down to examine the tire.

“Yup,” she says. “What you’ve got here is an attempted suicide. We see them sometimes, out on the edge of town. Dang things just don’t know how to hold themselves together from the unbearable yawning void of existence like the rest of us. Won’t take but a moment.”

She removes one of her dark blue gloves, revealing a cracked, rusting metal hand. The runes covering it glisten in the sunlight. “Now you listen here,” she says to the tire. “Expiration dates were issued for a reason. You’re not scheduled to go out for another two years, you know that. Now quit your complaining and get back to work. Don’t you know who’s driving you?”

She uses the hand to pry the rock out from under the tire and flick it aside. As her fingers sink into the rubber, passing through as if through air but leaving behind a roiling, bubbling burn, the tire hisses sadly. Carlos can’t tell how he knows the hiss is sad, but it seems obvious nonetheless. The woman flexes her hand with a _pop._ With a slow, mournful sigh, the rip in the tire closes itself. She pulls out her hand, and the burn fades. Slipping the glove back on, she stands up and nods again, clearly satisfied with her work.

“It won’t trouble you anymore,” she tells them. “Enjoy the rest of your drive, sirs.” She gets back in the truck, which promptly shimmers into nonexistence again with the sound of an electrical shortage and the smell of ammonia.

“They’re always so helpful,” Cecil says approvingly. “That’s the strength of a good municipal system. So, does that new data point help you?”

“I think I’m done testing for today,” Carlos says. He doesn’t know how much more he can take right now. There’s sure to be something wrong when they return, anyway. He’ll have to deal with that instead.

Cecil looks like he’s never been happier. Maybe he hasn’t. He looks like that all the time, now, when Carlos sees him. Which is often, these days. Cecil is always so eager to help. Carlos can’t remember anyone outside ever wanting to please him so much. 

Remembering things from outside is getting harder, these days.

He could scream, or bang his head against a wall, or do any number of things that won’t do anything at all besides make Cecil worry about him if he found out. Right now he’s mostly just tired.

“Let’s go back,” Carlos says. “Should I drop you off at the station or your apartment?”

“Oh, the station, if you don’t mind,” Cecil says. “I still have to prepare for tonight’s broadcast. Can’t have the interns be the only ones writing the script; not since Giaccomo.”

Cecil already did a broadcast that morning, but Carlos can never tell what the actual schedule is. Sometimes it seems like Cecil’s show runs all day. Sometimes the evening show starts at 5, or 6, or (the clock said) 6:97; once, when Carlos was still new and had the radio on as background noise during a long night of centrifuging, he resurfaced from his work to hear the show still going on past midnight. 

Once, the week before Carlos would give in and call Cecil about the clocks, the show started at 5 with Cecil saying “Due to issues with the equipment, tonight’s news will be a rerun”, and he woke up one hour later to discover he’d repeated the last night’s work. He turned off the radio and spent the next few hours sitting quietly and wondering how long it would take before his funding would run out.

He still receives regular checks, though. Sometimes the envelopes are even unopened.

“Okay,” Carlos says, and starts the car again. All the way back, the engine hums appreciatively.

He drops Cecil off at the station with a kiss, because it feels like the thing to do and the brief contact makes things seem more real. Cecil’s love is honest, if sometimes unorthodox, and Carlos needs the reminder that it’s not like he has no reason to stay. The outside world never gave him anything like this. He’s not sure he ever even thought it would. In fact, sometimes he thinks he was never happier than he is now--

\--was he?

It’s getting harder to remember.

Carlos enters his apartment and stretches out on the ratty old couch that appeared in it a few days after he first arrived. He doesn’t scream into a pillow. It wouldn’t do much good, and last time the pillow started screaming back.

He stares up at the ceiling. Last month, it developed a major case of black mold overnight; the following day, the mold gradually receded into itself, leaving snail-tracks of a dark dust he hasn’t been able to clean off. Sometimes the dust forms itself into little phrases like _Good morning!_ or _It might rain today_ or _There’s something in the laundry basket._ He’d been able to clean away the something, at least. 

Right now, the dust reads _Chin up! You’re doing fine!_.

Carlos laughs a little to himself and rests his arm over his eyes. That’s the thing, isn’t it; he is. He’s alive, and in all the pieces he had before he came here. He isn’t suffering in any particular way. He has his work. He has Cecil. Why should he be concerned about leaving? He doesn’t even want to.

It’s only early afternoon, but it’s not like anyone is going to yell at him for taking a nap. Besides, he’s tired. He can get back to work tonight. Cecil’s show will catch him up on anything he missed.

As he drifts off to sleep, one tiny, tiny thought flickers through his head just briefly--

\-- _but why was I so desperate to try--_

\--but then he’s out.


End file.
